222. The Battle of Five-ish Armies, Part 7 [Cottontail]

I lead Tygge far away from the others. It hurts my heart to think of the wolves that died without any idea of what was coming. I can't let their fates befall anyone else if I can help it. 

That's why it's best that I settle things alone.

The last of the fireworks (a lucky pull on my part to attract Tygge's attention) expires, and I toss the empty box aside. Then I spin about, grab my magical tophat, and prepare myself. I can't count on swordsmanship when the Darkling Horror will simply eat my orange 'blade'. Nor is this an opponent I can fight with whatever random stuff I draw. I need a game plan. I need focus.

I know what each item in my repertoire feels like, magically speaking. I just need to concentrate on recalling those sensations. Breathing deeply, I force myself not to worry about what Tygge will do when she reaches me. 

Then I reach into my hat and pull out a set of rings to stall her for my approach. 

"Aww, I've seen that before!" Tygge complains. 

I ignore her heckling and throw the rings, counting on the fact that it'll take a few seconds for her maws to gnaw through the conjured metal, spend a drop of Luck, and they land perfectly on her hands and neck. Five rings become three as I speak a word of power, pinning her wrists to her throat as the contracting steel is unable to cut through her hard carapace. Then I dart forward, picturing sturdier restraints, and pull something from my hat.

"For this next trick, I'll need an assistant," I proclaim, arcane intuition guiding my words.

Tygge breaks her left arm free of the rings and reaches for me as I close in. With one smooth, theatrical motion, I slip the sleeve of a white jacket onto Tygge, hop and roll across her shoulders before trapping her right arm as she frees it from the metal rings. My Performer's Body allows me to do elaborate physical feats as long as I do them as if for an audience. Thankfully, my movements are too quick for her to respond with a bite. Then I circle around, using the extra-long sleeves of the jacket to bind her. 

There are straps and buckles all over the jacket that I start to fasten, my fingers blurring with speed. It's crazy-intimidating to be this close to the Horror, but I refuse to hesitate. Her fascinated gaze burns into me as I work, eyes going wide with hunger. She's huffing like a bellows in her eagerness to sink her teeth into me. 

"Rrrra! This is more like it! So exciting!" she squeals with joy. Next comes a pair of fuzzy handcuffs with their keys. I slap them on her bound wrists behind her back, lock them, and swallow the key on impulse. "Oh, you're really going all-out this time!"

*Burp.* "Excuse me. Wait, I'm not done!" I whip out a huge red sheet, unfurl it in the air, and summon the anger I felt when Tygge hurt Megan yesterday. She won't do that to anyone ever again. "Abracadabra."

I will an ancient death-device into existence with my magic. I don't know how it appears or where it comes from, the limits of my ability are shrouded in mystery, but the contraption appears when I pull away the sheet.

A glass tank full of water towers above us. It's full of mean-looking fish with oversized jaws. They gnash their sharp, triangular teeth at us as we stare in awe. Above the tank is a crane dangling an open sarcophagus above the water by a rope, the stone coffin's interior lined with scores of rusty spikes. The eyes of the haunting face carved into the front have tear-tracks of dried blood.

Next, I bring out the endless scarves, another classic from my repertoire. Three lines of multicolored cloths tied end-to-end burst from my hat's dark mouth to tie themselves around Tygge's arms and torso. I backflip high onto the lip of the tank before flipping again onto the crane, hat in hand; the scarf-ropes go taught as if anchored to something unseen inside the top hat. Once more, I backflip off the crane into open air, my descent arrested as my body acts as the counterweight pulling Tygge into the air. I swing into the side of the tank halfway down, landing on my bunny paws, and brace myself. Hand over hand, I haul Tygge up using my makeshift pulley. 

"Wow, this is amazing!" Tygge says with a twinkle of delight in her glistening black eyes as she stares at me through the glass. "How am I going to get out of this one?"

"...You're not." Even if she does eat her way free, I almost had her with the sawing-in-half trick yesterday before her allies came to the rescue, and nobody is coming to help her this time. Or I'll just keep coming up with something else until it finally sticks. I'm not afraid of Tygge anymore. Nothing in this Tier is beyond my power to deal with. My abilities are everything I was promised as an Arcane-Rank Third Tier; I just had to learn how to use them. 

My only hesitation is that Tygge, for all the insanity and murder, somehow doesn't seem like a 'bad' person. When she hurt me yesterday, I swear she seemed genuinely remorseful. She even wanted to save my life in her own twisted way. As upset as I am for the people she's killed and the way she harmed Megan, those examples were either her lashing out in defense or incidental homicide. 

She doesn't fight to inflict pain. She doesn't delight in suffering. She seeks novelty and excitement wherever that leads; she's just so much more deadly than the people she encounters along the way that it always ends in bloodshed. I doubt she comprehends the morality of her actions. I'd try to talk to her but, sadly, I don't think she'd stop and listen to a logical argument.

"Hey, Cottontail, before you throw me in the spiky thing, can I ask a question?" 

Pausing, I leave her suspended over the open tank as it froths with starving predators snapping at her heels. I'm completely taken aback by this non-sequitur. Does she have no concept of fear and death, or does she find the ideas novel? "Uh, okay."

She seems ridiculously pleased with my cooperation. "Thanks! Okay, I wanted to know why you smell so good?"

"Umm..." Is that why she was huffing me earlier?

"It's really weird! I think I'm hungry but it's like in a different place than normal. Or maybe it's more like an itch I can't scratch? I've never felt this way before!" It almost sounds like... "You smell the same as yesterday, but it's a lot more powerful now, and it's affecting me differently, if that makes sense?"

The Golden Grove Perfume! It's having the same effect on her that it did on the Pack!

"And there's a bunch of new smells on you that definitely aren't yours and they're making me want to be angry, but I don't understand why. It's all very confusing, and it's keeping me from enjoying us playing together compared to yesterday. Do you know what this is I'm feeling, Cottontail?"

She's talking about the Wolf boys and girls that were all over me! I never cleaned up, so I'm still covered in cum stains and dried juices. The intense fragrance has soaked into my clothes, fur, and hair. Her instincts must be possessive about sharing with other predators...

The second thing that's upsetting is the fact that she's asking me. She trusts me to be truthful; I can hear it in her voice. It's like we're friends in her alien mind, even if she doesn't understand the concept.

I... I can't just kill her. Not without giving her a chance. 

"Tygge," I begin, forcing through the uncertainty and awkwardness, "It sounds to me like you're feeling horny."

"Eh? What's 'horny'? Can you eat it?"

"N-no, 'horny' is when you want... sex."

"Eh? What's 'sex'? Can—"

"—Sex is when two people attracted to one another do things to make each other feel good," I explain.

"Oh?!? What kinds of things?"

Now, to see if this idea has legs. I'll have no choice but to resume the battle if she won't cooperate. "Promise to listen to me, do as I say, and... I'll show you."

"Hmm," the bound Horror considers my offer. "Is sex more fun than fighting?"

Shrugging at the craziness of this conversation, I reply, "I can honestly say that I've always preferred it."

"R-really? Sex is that amazing?!?" Tygge is exuberant with this news. "Show me! Show me!"

"Alright, hold on." Reluctantly, I make to lower Tygge back down from the pulley. She has other ideas, redoubling her struggle to free herself from my restraints. The Darkling Horror puts so much effort into it that she frays the scarf-rope holding her aloft. 

With a snap, she plummets into the tank. The water instantly turns opaque with blood.

Oh fuck, oh fuck, did I just kill her? Well, at least she didn't get locked up in the spiked sarcophagus before falling into the deadly brine.

As the seconds tick by, I realize I shouldn't have counted her out. The water stills, though it remains murky. Then the level of the tank drops as if the bottom opened into a cavern below the ground. 

In moments, I can see Tygge standing there with a hundred mouths open as she finishes draining the tank into her seemingly bottomless stomach. *Gulp!*

Seriously, what the heck is she? 

The Darkling Horror plows through the glass wall of the tank with casual strength and toughness, shattering the pane at a calm stroll while munching on whatever shards land on her. I take a step back. Okay, maybe I have a healthy respect for her power.

"Okay, now show me sex!"

"H-hold on," I backpedal as she advances to maintain a few meters distance between us.

"Eh? What are we waiting for?" She doesn't halt or slow her steps. 

She's stressing me out. "I can't just show you sex. Wait!" I stop her objection mid-protest. "Sex is... Well, if we're doing this, we'll be making love, which is the kind of sex that depends on trust. You have to listen when I tell you to stop, or it won't work."

She keeps coming, and I keep backing up. 

"Okay, stop."

"Stop what?"

This might be harder than I thought. "Please stop walking toward me, it's making me nervous."

She finally halts that unceasing march for the first time. I breathe a sigh of relief. There's no hint of guile or deceit in her bearing. Just naivete. It seems this insane idea could actually work after all!

"Are we doing love yet?" She tilts her head in impatient curiosity. "Or is it making the sex? Now I'm confused!"

"Hmm, Alex says that the brain is the biggest sexual organ in the body. I think that, technically, we..." A glance tells me I'm losing her. "Ahem. You have to be patient. Trust me, give me a chance, and I swear that making love will be more fun than anything you've ever done before."

 "..." She ponders my words. But not for too long. "Okay! I'll let you do love with me your way. I'm already having more fun than anytime except yesterday. You're always doing such exciting things, Cottontail!"

That gets me thinking. "Tygge, how old are you?" 

I dread an unfortunate answer. 

"What do you mean?"

I'm about to ask how many days or years she remembers, when I realize she lives underground. "How much time do you remember or memories do you have? Oh, how many meals have you had?" That might give me a baseline to judge her age.

Tygge decides to humor me, giving the question serious thought. "Thousands? I remember searching for food, almost starving, and scrounging for scraps thousands upon thousands of times. Most of my big sisters didn't like to share. I remember playing with other pieces of me a lot. I remember every inch of the caverns, from the cracks opening to the sky, to the underground coves, to the deep dark where the earth blood flows. Does that help?"

It sounds like she has the memories of all the Darklings used to create her. I think Tygge might be older than me! She just doesn't have experience with sex. It's good, in a way, since her idea of it isn't poisoned like with her twisted Burrower and Widow sisters. 

"It does." My conscience is appeased, and I smile. "I'm happy I get to be the one to show you sex by making love."

Tygge lurches forward a step before stopping again. She apologizes, "Sorry, I got a weird feeling just now that made me want to jump on you, but I can listen and be good. You're just really pretty, Cottontail!"

"T-thank you." I quiver with anticipation. Only now does it hit me what I've signed up for. I'm about to make love to a terrifying predator who thinks I'm 'really pretty'! A giggle bubbles up inside me. It's already begun. "Tygge, this is foreplay."

"A game!?!" She grins, showing all her joy, excitement, and eagerness in a frightening display of teeth across her segmented carapace. 

"Yes," I approach the Darkling Horror regardless of the danger. Her self-restraint gives me confidence. "It's a game of looks and words and light touches. The first step in making love. No sudden movements, please."

"That's a weird game! But... I'm so excited, it feels like my body is on fire, except nice!"

"You're getting turned on. I feel it too." And I do. Tygge is much taller than me, with breasts larger than my head, curves to die for, and there's a fact I can't ignore. She's covered from head to heel with deadly maws along the many lines of her sleek, black carapace. This is one of the deadliest predators I've ever met. 

That's so. Fucking. Hot.

There's always been something wrong with me that I find the people who can snap me up in one bite irresistibly sexy. Alex has made it clear that she's okay with my playing at being prey as long as there's enough of me left to come home to her at the end of the day.

"Don't draw blood, no swallowing me, and, if you need to bite," I blush, "Be gentle~"